Birds of Prey miniatures available for pre-order

We are pleased to announce the pre-order process for 1:350 scale miniatures for Birds of Prey. We will be taking pre-orders for these in waves of four jets at a time. The first four are:

F-14 Tomcat (two per pack)

F-5 Tiger II (four per pack)

F-86 Sabre (four per pack)

MiG-15 Fagot (four per pack)

Our miniatures are created through a rapid prototyping process where we consistently get details as fine as a 0.3 millimeters to show up on our spacecraft minis. The detail you see on the rendered images is the detail you should see on the finished miniatures.

Some of these jets will likely be multi-part castings and take a bit of glue to assemble.

Pre-order Process
Each blister has a price of $17.95. When the total number of blisters pre-ordered hits 200 (whether that’s 140 F-14s, 20 F-15s, 20 F-86s, and 20 MiGs; 50 of each; or whatever combination), we’ll get the ball rolling on production.

People who commit to the pre-order price get a 10% discount on the cost of the miniatures, and get to know they’re helping put these in production

Ad Astra Games never asks for your payment information until our products are ready to go to production. For security, we do not store our customers’ credit card information.

In general, going from “hit the preorder threshold” to “take orders on the shopping cart” will be 1-3 months. Once we take orders on the shopping cart, the lead time ranges from 6 weeks if the stars align properly to twelve weeks if Reaper Miniatures is backed up on production, or a master needs to be re-done.

Why 1:350 scale?
First, so that our jets will be compatible with the aeronautical diorama community, who use the 1:350 scale as their standard for naval and fighting aircraft displays.

Second, because we’ve seen enough jets at “just about” 1:300 to 1:285 scale to know that that’s a crowded niche, and the scaling is rarely consistent—even on miniatures from the same manufacturer. Within the limits of metal shrinkage, our miniatures will be in scale to each other and to their real world counterparts. (The wings and other thin, flat surfaces will be exaggerated compared to the real world planes to make them survive casting.)

Third, because they’re the right size for the hexes most commonly used for Birds of Prey: Air Combat in the Jet Age, large enough to show a lot of detail, and small enough to work with our magnetic flight basing system.

So, what would be in future waves? Well, we want to get through all of the aircraft in the main boxed set first. Of course, each wave depends on the success of the previous waves. Here’s what we’re looking at for the contents of the main box:

MiG-15bis Fagot-B

F-86F (early) Sabre

MiG-17F Fresco-C

Hunter FGA.Mk.9

MiG-19S / J-6 Farmer-C

F-104C Starfighter

MiG-21F-13 Fishbed-E

MiG-21MF Fishbed-J

Mirage IIIC

F-8E Crusader II

F-4J Phantom II

F-4E Phantom II

(early, unslatted)

Lightning F.Mk.6

F-5E Tiger II (service variant)

F-14A Tomcat

MiG-23MS Flogger-E

Mirage F1EQ

JA 37 Jaktviggen

MiG-29 9.12 Fulcrum-A

Mirage 2000C S4

F-15C Eagle MSIP-II

Su-27S / J-11 Flanker-B

F/A-18C Hornet (early)

F-16C blk-30 Fighting Falcon

The two Fishbeds and the two Phantoms are visually distinct enough that we would want to do different versions.